


fix me in forty-five

by SummerFrost



Series: Suitehearts [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Ableism, Dyslexia, M/M, and at least one dick joke, featuring the NHL concussion crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 00:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17693987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: It feels a little unfair that Nelly was actuallytryingthis time.Or: a case study on the most frequently vacated position in the Seattle Schooners' front office.





	fix me in forty-five

**Author's Note:**

> I've been clapping my little goblin hands together ever since I wrote this fic, waiting for the right moment to post it. Please enjoy the story of how Travis Nelson inadvertently set off a chain of events that would eventually land Eric Bittle a job, netting him a new best friend and some excellent sex on a couch (not in that order). 
> 
> Love, as always, to the #hellsquad without whom this universe would not exist, and agrossunderstatement, who beta'd.
> 
> Title from Thriller from FOB.

**February 2018**

Nelly isn’t even all the way back through the tunnel after the game when he catches sight of Melissa power-walking towards him.

“Hey, Mellie!” he calls out, taking his bucket off with one hand and waving with the other. He likes Mellie; she’s been in charge of his PR for almost three years, which is probably a record.

Melissa forcibly shoves a piece of paper against Nelly’s chest right as his skates bump the carpet. “Travis, _please_ read this script when you talk to the press.”

Too bad Melissa doesn’t like Nelly.

Nelly takes the piece of paper and squints at it. Extra gibberish today. “What’d I do?”

“You _know_ what you did,” she hisses, exasperated. “It’s a good thing you lost. You’ll come off humble—for once.”

Nelly keeps walking and staring at the paper. He tries to adjust his stride so that she doesn’t have to work too hard to keep up with him, but her heels are clicking extra loud behind his skates. “Mellie, babe, can’t you just give me the Spark Notes?”

“It’s _one_ paragraph, Travis, for fuck’s sake!” They’re in the locker room now and Melissa is throwing her hands up in the air dramatically. _“Please_ just do this for me. I can’t handle another chewing out from my boss, okay?”

Nelly can hear the press gathering outside. He’s still staring at the paper but he can’t read while she’s yelling at him. “Please, at least wait—”

“Just read it!” Melissa insists, then turns on her heels without another word, dodging his half-naked teammates as they wander around and mope about racking up another loss.

“I—” _can’t,_ Nelly finishes silently, but she’s already gone. He wouldn’t really tell her, anyway, probably.

It’s so fucking loud in here. Nelly looks at the clock. He probably has five minutes before they let the press in, since Melissa won’t stall for him. He works out the first sentence— _I apologize for my unprofessional comments._ The next sentence is probably just as bullshit and unhelpful. He needs to figure out what he _did._

Was it the joke he made about rooting for the Aces in today’s game?

Nah, everyone’s used to that one. And besides—he doesn’t see anything that looks like Parse’s name.

Right, plan B. Miley would read the script for him without asking any unchill questions—but he always takes first shower and stays in there for exactly seven minutes because he’s a weird fucking dude which is normally whatever, but sucks specifically right now.

Nelly could like, text a pic to Parse and call him. But he’s probably celebrating with his team right now, and interrupting that is totally not bros. And they’ve never really talked about Nelly’s whole deal with reading, anyway.

“Nel, are you okay?” Benji asks.

“Uh,” Nelly says. “Can you—”

“Boys,” Coach says, “presser time. Chins up.”

Nelly crumples the paper in his hand and chucks it at the bin; it misses. Fuck it.

He tries to fluff up his helmet hair instead—at least he can look pretty when he’s plastered over ESPN tomorrow. The press crowds around him and things start off with a few softball questions about the Schooners’ continued disappointing win percentage against the Aces and what Nelly will do to prepare for a better outcome next time the teams face-off.

He could quote statistics about the best ways to score on the Aces’ goalie, but he’ll be scoring on Parse tonight anyway, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Then the ESPN reporter asks, “Travis, can you comment on your recent controversial Twitter activity?”

Okay, that narrows things down not at all. Nelly smiles innocently and asks, “Which time?”

His teammates within earshot laugh. The reporter helpfully clarifies, “The article that recently dropped—outlining the series of tweets you recently liked which heavily criticized the league’s official response to the ‘concussion crisis?’”

“Oh!” Nelly says. That’s easy. “I, uh, I’m sorry if it was like, unprofessional or something to do that on my official Twitter?”

Melissa, who crept back into the room with the press, visibly relaxes her shoulders.

“But you’re confirming your support for the content of those tweets?” the reporter asks.

Nelly scrunches up his face. “I mean, look—I _love_ hockey. But that doesn’t mean I have to love the NHL, like, sweeping player health under the rug?”

No one asks him anything else.

Nelly locks eyes with the ESPN reporter and keeps talking. “And I mean, like, I could—my brother could quote you _mad_ statistics about how messed up head injuries are and the correlations between repeated head trauma and on-ice performance, but no one seems to care about that?”

Melissa makes a _‘cut’_ motion over her throat. This probably isn’t what her paper said.

“So, I mean, my brain’s not my _favorite_ part of my body—that’d be—” _don’t talk about your dick on live TV,_ “—well, anyway, I still wanna keep it.”

More silence, until one of the other reporters raises their hand and says, “Travis, I think my organization would be _very_ interested in bringing you in for a full interview about this topic.”

Oh good, Nelly knows the right answer to that one. He smiles at the reporter and dutifully reports, “All requests for interviews should be fielded to Melissa Cooper, our team’s lead Public Relations staffer. She’s right there!”

He doesn’t get very many questions after that, so he takes the opportunity to shower up while the reporter makes a beeline for Mellie.

She’s waiting for him when he gets out, standing between him and his gear bag with her arms crossed.

Nelly says, “Um—”

“You are the most selfish mother _fucker_ I’ve ever worked with!” Melissa spits. Her voice sounds like those videos Miley likes to watch where really hot knives cut through stuff. “I _quit,_ Travis.”

Nelly watches her storm away in stunned silence. She makes it halfway through the door when he manages to shout, “I’m sorry?”

Mellie kicks the crumpled up script across the room and lets the door slam behind her.

“Woah,” says Benji.

“Yikes,” Miley adds super helpfully. “She seemed really mad.”

Nelly scrubs at his face. It feels a little unfair that he was actually _trying_ that time. And also—what the hell did she want him to _say?_ Was he supposed to act like he’s horny for brain damage? Because fuck that.

Miley gently waves a hand in front of Nelly’s face. “Dad? Do you want a hug or something? We could find Parse.”

“Not if I find you first,” Parse chirps. Nelly looks up at the sound of his voice and must not be making a very chill face, because Parse stops smirking and asks, “Woah, we didn’t kick your ass that badly did we?”

Benji explains, “His PR lady just quit,” then reaches over and unfastens the front of Nelly’s shoulder pads. Nelly hadn’t realized he was still wearing them.

“Shit, Melissa?” Parse looks around the room. “Wasn’t she here like, for-fucking-ever?”

“I think so,” says Benji.

Nelly shrugs out of his pads and rips off his undershirt too. “I mean, what can ya do? I hope she finds a job she likes better.”

Parse tosses him a clean shirt. “You wanna go home, babe?”

“Wait, we’re not going out?” Miley asks. His eyes are a little wide. “We always go out when Parse wins.”

Nelly finishes changing and swipes deodorant under his pits so he doesn’t have to shower. He wants to rally for Mo’s sake, but all he wants right now is to make someone squish him until his brain feels less buzzy—and apparently he’s selfish.

“Sorry, bud, not tonight,” he says, glancing at the kid apologetically as he shoulders his gear bag.

Miley looks like he’s about to say something else, but Soup comes over and slings a continuously-more tattooed arm around his shoulders. “C’mon, kid. I’ll take you out.”

That brightens Miley up a bit, but he still looks back at Nelly with a worried expression as they walk away. Nelly’s gonna have to make it up to him later.

Parse does some sort of weird trust-fall-esque thing where he flops his entire body weight right into Nelly’s side; Nelly catches him, obviously, and holds him there.

“Your place or mine?” Parse asks, blinking up at Nelly with his head resting against Nelly’s bicep.

Nelly just laughs and hauls Parse to his feet. “You coming, Benj?”

“I was gonna go party,” Benji tries to deadpan, but he fucks it up with a giggle-snort halfway through. It’s better that way, anyway.

Nelly leads the charge out to his car, Parse still under his arm. He bends down to grab Mellie’s script on their way out.

He wants to know how he let her down.

 

~*~

 

They get back to Nelly’s place and feed the dogs; Nelly crouches down on the floor and lets dog-Benji slobber all over his face for a while, which helps a little. Then he flops down onto the couch on his back, resting his head on Parse’s thigh, and human-Benji lays on top of him so they’re chest to chest and Benji’s cheek is on Parse’s thigh too.

“Thanks,” Nelly says. Benji normally sits in the armchair if Parse is here, which means Nelly’s probably having a worse time than he’s trying to convince himself he’s having.

Parse scritches at the shaved part of Nelly’s undercut and asks, “So, uh, what happened?”

“The press asked me about the concussion stuff,” Nelly says. He fishes the script out of his pocket and lobs it sort-of at Parse, who catches it. “I said…not that, I guess?”

Parse uncrumples the paper and mouths the words to himself while he reads it. He does it so _fast._ “Yikes. I mean, this is some bullshit, bro. But, I mean—no offense, but if you didn't want her to quit why didn't you just throw her a bone here?”

Nelly tries to breathe so hard that he can feel his chest pushing back against Benji's weight when he insists, “It wasn't on purpose.”

“What?” Parse asks. “Like, they asked a shitty follow-up or—?”

“No, I mean, I just didn't have time to read it,” Nelly says. He thinks he makes it pretty casual. “She only gave me, like, five minutes.”

Parse is weirdly quiet. He drags his fingers through Nelly's hair in a careful way. “Oh, uh, like—you just skimmed it?”

“No, uh.” Nelly squeezes his eyes shut. It's not a big deal. It's not like anyone likes him because they think he's smart. “I couldn't at all. I couldn't fix the letters fast enough.”

Benji shifts and looks up so the point of his chin is lightly digging into Nelly's left pec. “Huh?”

“Babe—” Parse starts.

“No, like, it's chill. I mean, I know I'm not good at it.” Nelly laughs.

Parse is squinting at Benji, but he's talking to Nelly when he asks, “No, no—babe, good at _what?_ I have no clue what you're fucking saying.”

Parse is pretty smart. Maybe he does it so fast he doesn't even have to think about it anymore. Nelly explains, “Don't you ever, like—when you're pissed or someone's yelling or something, and the letters start moving really fast and it takes longer to like, put them in order and sometimes you can't see the spaces anymore?”

No one says anything.

“You must be so good at it,” Nelly says in the silence. He doesn't wanna make Parse feel guilty about it, so he grins up at him. “That's awesome, babe.”

“No, Nel—Trav, I…” Parse hesitates like he used to before he knew Nelly was queer. Like he's not sure how to understand him. “I don't have to do that?”

Nelly scoots up so his shoulders are the thing on Parse's thigh and he can look at Benji. “You get it, right?”

Benji frowns, his eyebrows scrunching up because he's trying _so_ hard to say the right thing. “Um...I mean, I'm, uh. I'm really slow at reading, but it's not...the—the words and stuff, they're in the right places? I just need a while sometimes to like, think about what I think.”

Nelly waits for someone to laugh. He looks between them and then stares at an upended shot glass on the coffee table. It's one of the skull-shaped ones that Soup hides in peoples’ houses when they aren’t looking, and Nelly thinks this is probably the kind of prank he'd find funny.

“You guys can stop chirping me now,” he says. “Good one, haha.”

“Babe, no, wait,” says Parse. His phone is out, but Nelly's not sure when that happened. “I think—I think you have dyslexia.”

Nelly swallows the nothing in his mouth. “Nah,” he laughs, “I got my STD panel back last month.”

Everyone is taking too long to answer the things he says, like they're listening to him the way he reads.

“JK,” Nelly clarifies. He slides back down Parse's thigh until he's fully on his back. “But, like, nah, I don't—I don't have that?”

“How do you know?” Parse asks. “Did you get tested as a kid or something?”

Nelly laughs again. “No, I mean—I know I'm just st—I'm not that smart? And it's not like I tried at school, 'cause hockey, and besides dys-dyslexia is like, that thing where you can't read? I can read, I'm just bad at it.”

“Travis,” Parse says, but it's not the way Nelly likes. “You're _not —_you know more about stats than my entire fucking coaching staff combined. If I read you a recipe, you remember the whole thing. You can look at me and know exactly what I—”

“Yeah, but that's just fun stuff,” Nelly answers. “That's not—I couldn't have like, been a lawyer or anything my parents wanted, and it's not—there's not something _wrong_ with me I'm just not _good.”_

“Nothing would be wrong with you anyway,” Benji says. He's pushed up onto his forearms and looking at Nelly with those big brown eyes like he gets sometimes and it's fucking awful, because Nelly wants to kiss him all the time and doesn't mind that he can't except for right now. “It's not bad, even if you're just stupid. Right?”

Nelly feels pinned between them, suddenly, thinking about how Parse only remembers to love himself when Nelly loves him first and how long it takes Benji to add a tip to their bar tab, even though he knows where all the numbers go.

“'Course not,” Nelly tells him. He runs a hand through Benji's hair—getting long again, almost to his shoulders. “Sorry, bud. I shouldn't—I shouldn't talk like that.”

Benji lays his head back down on Nelly's chest. “I don't think you're stupid, though.”

It'd probably be weird to thank him.

“Babe, I'm literally on the official dyslexia website or whatever,” Parse says. “And it's not just not being able to read. It sounds like what you said.”

Nelly turns his head towards him. “Really?”

“Yeah, it's talking about how sometimes it's that the letters are moving or like, jumbled up or the wrong way around?” Parse explains. “But it can be other stuff too, like if the words move around on the page. Or even if you can read them but it gives you headaches and shit.”

Nelly massages the tension over his eyebrows. “I don't, uh…”

“There's tests and shit they can do,” Parse tells him. “If you wanted.”

Nelly is staring up at the ceiling. “But you think that like—that maybe this thing is why I failed English and Dad always said I was just lazy, and—and Mellie thought I did it on purpose?”

“Maybe.” Parse cups Nelly’s jaw in one hand and turns his face so that they’re looking right at each other. Parse’s eyes are really bright and blue. “But also _fuck_ them, and fuck anyone who made you think you’re not good enough.”

Nelly’s chest hurts again, but the good kind. He smiles up at him and whispers, “No homo.”

Parse smiles back. “Full bi,” he answers, dragging his thumb across Nelly’s beard.

Benji pushes himself further down the couch, shoving Nelly upwards by the hips so that he’s in kissing-range of Parse’s mouth and Benji’s watching them with his cheek on his forearms. Nelly goes as easy as he always does when Parse drags his mouth open with his thumb.

Normally when they’re kissing it’s all Nelly thinks about, but right now he’s still distracted. He thinks about having no friends after year ten, Parse’s fingertips nudging under the band of his track pants, copying someone else’s order at every restaurant so he doesn’t have to read the menus. Parse’s mouth, the stubble on their lips scratching together, _fuck anyone who made you think you’re not good enough._

Nelly pulls away with a laugh. “Dyslexia.”

“Yeah?” Parse raises a chirpy eyebrow.

Nelly grins. “I’ll never be able to spell that.”

Parse laughs so hard that he shoves Nelly off the couch, but obviously Nelly grabs him on the way down so they’re both on the carpet and kissing again, even though their teeth keep getting in the way.

“Are you guys gonna have sex now?” Benji asks. “’Cause I could take the dogs out for you.”

Nelly pulls them both to their feet and slips his hand into the back pocket of Parse’s jeans. From the way Parse arches his back just a little, and basically everything else about their personalities, he’s pretty sure the answer is yes. “Thanks, Benj.”

Parse leans up to bite down on Nelly’s earlobe, which, fuck, that always really does it for him. “Open invitation to watch,” he tells Benji with a wink, “as you know.”

“Um.” Benji giggles and his cheeks turn a little pink like they always do when someone chirps him too hard. “Not tonight, thanks.”

Parse shrugs, says, “Suit yourself,” then makes an _ack_ noise when Nelly tries to lift him and has to put him down because he’s sore from the game. “Mission fail, babe.”

Benji rolls off the couch and claps for the dogs, who perk their ears up and all bound over with their tails wagging. “Can we watch Netflix when you’re done?”

“Sure, bud,” Nelly says with a smile.

Benji takes the dogs out to the backyard and Nelly walks Parse into the couch, kissing him when the backs of his knees hit the cushions.

Parse’s hands are pulling Nelly’s shirt over his head, but he asks, “You sure you don’t wanna talk about this more?”

Nelly manages to get Parse’s jeans unbuttoned and down his thighs with one hand. “Later, maybe.”

“Okay,” Parse says. He keeps cupping Nelly’s face today, which is weird. “I’m sorry about Melissa. I know you liked her.”

Nelly glances over at the script she gave him, all wrinkled and stuck, forgotten, halfway under a couch cushion. He still doesn’t know what she wanted.

“It’s okay,” he says. He can hear the sound of her heels on the linoleum when she stormed away, but Parse’s hands are warm against his skin. “Maybe next time they’ll like me back.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm most active on [my Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/summerfrost) these days, but I do also still have [Tumblr!](https://www.yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com)
> 
> If you want more of Nelly&pals, check out [the OMGCP Suitehearts blog!](https://omgcp-suitehearts.tumblr.com/)


End file.
